Coordinating a gathering of multiple people with multiple transportation options for travel to a specific place at a specific time can be of tremendous value. In the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon desperately waited for the arrival of his reinforcements when instead his opponent Blücher arrived with a Prussian army and swept him away from the field of battle and thereby the stage of history. Today, businesses lose large amounts of productive hours due to the intractable and nettlesome late arrival of employees at meetings or work. Similarly, in a social context, disparate arrival of participants of a social event to a destination, such as a restaurant, can jeopardize the success of the event.
Coordinating simultaneous arrival of multiple people at a specific place is complicated due to the large number of factors involved. For example, each person may have his or her own preference on mode of transportation, including walking, jogging, biking, driving, car-pool, bus, subway, light rail, train, ferry, and taxi. The preference can be influenced by cost, speed, convenience, and reliability of the transport and further shaped by a person's habit and value system. Travelers to a specific location may also have social preferences such as an inclination or aversion to the company of a fellow traveler. A traveler, for instance, may prefer to meet another traveler en route to the event, since joining together in travel tends to decrease the travel cost, increase comfort, and provide opportunity to socialize. Another factor contributing to the complexity is the random but frequent traffic delays that are almost unavoidable for a large group of travelers taking various modes of transportation. As the number of travelers to a specific location grows, the challenge becomes daunting to devise a travel plan for on-time arrival while accommodating each traveler's location, travel preferences, and accounting for unexpected traffic delays.
Given the importance of the coordinated arrival, significant efforts and resources have been invested in facilitating the accomplishment of this goal; however, the result has generally not been satisfactory. For example, Google Map™ allows a user to input a starting point and a destination, and returns route suggestions and estimated time of travel. A user may select a mode of transportation including car, bus, biking, and walking. A mobile version may track the location of a traveler and send an alert of a traffic jam through a display. However, Google Map only provides advice to individual users and does not perform functions required to coordinate arrivals of multiple people. Mapquest® and other similar applications provide comparable functions to those of Google Map™, and do not remedy the shortcomings of Google Map™ U.S. Patent Application No. 20120041672, entitled “Automated Social Routing” to Scott Curtis et al. (“Curtis”), discloses systems and methods for providing automated social routing. After a user provides a starting point and a stopping point, multiple suggestions of travel routes are made on account of other users' usage or rating of the routes. Thus, Curtis focuses on locating a route by consensus and does not address joining fellow travelers and does not solve the challenge of coordinating simultaneous arrival of multiple people from disparate locations to a designated location at a designated time.
U.S. Patent Application No. 20080293430, entitled “Method, Apparatus and Computer Program Product for a Social Route Planner” to Jan Blom et al. (“Blom”), discloses a system and method of obtaining social information associated with a particular area and a traveler, associating the social information with a candidate route through the particular area, and making a recommendation on a route. Blom focuses on recommending a route to a solo traveler based on information gathered about the traveler and does not coordinate a group to reach a desired destination.
Therefore, a need remains for a way to dynamically coordinate simultaneous arrival of multiple people from disparate locations to a specific place at a specific time, while taking into account each person's preferences.